Category: Articles

Do you use survival patterns… and not even know it?

What Are Survival Patterns?

They are skills you develop to help you navigate your emotional pain. These patterns, often referred to as love styles, help you manage and tolerate the feelings you have.

Survival patterns tend to show up when you have some unresolved emotional trauma.

Unfortunately, survival patterns don’t always serve you.

How Your Childhood Affects Your Love Style

To help you see if you do have patterns and show you how traumas create negative patterns in relationships, let me share my story.

I was born into a beautiful family. My parents loved each other, and this love flowed to my older sister, Joy Ann and myself. For the first couple of years of my life, I felt loved, wanted and cared for.

I felt happy and secure, especially with my father.

Then, when I was a toddler, tragedy struck.

My father drowned in a canoeing accident at the coaching camp we attended together.

He was in a canoe with another coach and two basketball players. They were joking around, splashing water on each other. And then my father fell out of the canoe. He never resurfaced.

It took a long time to find his body.

That day changed my life forever.

From that moment onwards, my mom checked out due to grief. She shut down. Worse still, the doctors told her that she should start drinking a couple of glasses of wine each night, to help her sleep.

She started with two, but this quickly grew to eight glasses… and developed into alcoholism.

At the age of four, I essentially lost both parents.

My mother was a beautiful woman and soon after my father died, she met a man in a bar. She remarried within six months.

My stepfather had no idea what he was signing up for.  He began to control our environment because my Mom had lost control.  It felt like he took her away from me. For the first time in my life, I had feelings of jealousy.

To deal with this I started to develop survival patterns, or skills to deflect the emotional pain I was feeling. The survival pattern I developed was secretive behavior.

And one of the secretive habits was stealing my stepfather’s peanuts. This helped me feel in control when everything around me had been lost.

I wanted to feel like something was mine.

I was only five, and I remember taking six to eight peanuts at a time. I knew if I took more than ten, he would notice and yell at me. This level of detail was a result of the trauma that I had early in my life.

Stealing peanuts was a silent way to control my emotional pain.

It was my way of rebelling against someone who took away my mother and started her alcoholism – or so my five-year-old self thought.

Does Childhood Trauma Ever Go Away?

Survival patterns typically remain the same in our adulthood. When my inner child was activated in my adult life, then I would once again turn to my secretive behavior as a survival pattern.

I would secretly go out on a quest to obtain something that I could take and claim as mine.

I developed these secretive behaviors because I felt abandoned as a child and wanted to have something of my own.

When I was a teenager, I’d steal clothes, so no one would know how screwed up things were at home.

When I was an adult, I continued being secretive by hiding my feelings and trying to control the outcomes in relationships.

Today, when I work with my clients as a relationship coach, I see them incorporating survival patterns to manage and tolerate their feelings. Feelings that trace back to their childhood.

They continue using the same love styles to cope in their adult lives.

The result… the drama continues, and the past trauma continues to get activated, even in situations where it’s not reasonable to have intense emotions.

It’s important to consider how your survival patterns are still showing up today and to see how they negatively impact your adult relationships.

What Is Your Survival Pattern?

See if you recognize any of these patterns below:

The Avoider Love Style

If you’re an avoider, you’re probably sensitive to criticism, rejection, and failure.

You may try to escape getting hurt by making yourself smaller or invisible.

You live within your controllable comfort zone, but you criticize yourself before anyone else can do this to you. You are constantly on the lookout for signs of judgment, criticism or danger.

As an avoider, you remove yourself from relationships where you have the risk of getting hurt.

The Pleaser Love Style

As a pleaser, you may believe that to avoid getting rejected or abandoned, you need to please everyone, making sure that everyone is “ok” with you.

As a pleaser you may have a role, such as:

• The caretaker – you may feel very responsible for others;
• The chameleon – you can fit in everywhere;
• The joker – you try to win people over by being fun and the life of the party.

Whichever role you take, it’s all about putting others first.

As a child you may have grown up keeping the peace by helping. And as an adult you feel burnt out and unfulfilled. As a pleaser your sense of self-worth and safety depends on the approval of others.

The Controller Love Style

As a controller you feel you need to dominate people and situations. You may feel that you need to control outcomes in relationships, as well as every aspect of your life.

You may even take on the role of being the authority so you can enforce your ideas and rules on others, just to avoid feeling exposed, powerless and unsafe.

By controlling others, you feel more empowered and secure. However, underneath this you may have deep feelings of inferiority, vulnerability and pain, which trace back to traumas from your childhood.

The Achiever Love Style

Are you known as a go-getter, the one who achieves a lot? And who always exceeds everyone’s expectations?

Do you strive for the next achievement, never taking time to enjoy what you just accomplished?

Do you sometimes call yourself a perfectionist? And can’t accept mediocrity?

Your identity and self-worth are defined by your successes because your self-esteem comes through achievement. However, although you achieve goals, deep inside you may still have the fear of not being good enough, which motivates you to keep achieving.

This may lead to you feeling burnt out, empty, or unfulfilled. The result is that your relationships may suffer.

How Do I Overcome My Survival Pattern?

These survival patterns are your “go-to,” but you’ll see that most of the actions and behaviors no longer serve you. And they ultimately stop you from creating healthy relationships with other adults.

It’s not easy to change your behavior because it’s ingrained in your relationship dynamics. This makes it challenging for you to develop healthy emotional intimacy with your partner.

The first step is to be aware of your old patterns. See what triggers it. Early childhood relationships are the first place to look to identify survival patterns.

The next step is to know what your core wound is. Search your history to see what childhood trauma is unresolved. And GET HELP.

My core wound is abandonment and not feeling good enough. As a child, I constantly feared that I would be left.

The good news is that no matter what survival pattern you have, it doesn’t mean you’ve got this for life.

Let An Experienced Relationship Coach Help!

If you are committed to change, then you’re not stuck with your unhealthy love style forever. Instead, you need to be open to change and find a relationship expert to talk about the pain that’s inside of you and learn how to love yourself first.

Relationship coaching can also help you if you can’t seem to accept love or need help dealing with being ignored, as well as with a whole range of other issues. Remember you are worthy of happiness and love, and a healthy relationship.

Looking for a relationship coach online? If you are ready to create meaningful connections and overcome addictive relationships, then contact PIVOT. We offer effective relationship issues workshops at The Glass House, as well as transformative individual relationship coaching. We’re here to help.

For many people, self-love means occasionally treating yourself to an expensive piece of clothing or dedicating a night just to yourself. However, the true feeling of self-love is something that you should build and nurture throughout your life.

In fact, one of the first steps in accepting love from others is learning how to love and appreciate yourself. Only by understanding and embracing your inner self can you build strong, intimate relationships and be at peace with others.

Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced society, people are often swept up in other people’s emotions, personal goals, and constant feelings of self-criticism. Consequently, this can lead to serious mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, as well as relationship problems such as a lack of emotional intimacy with your partner. This is why individual coaching for relationship issues often includes working on self-acceptance, self-esteem, and other aspects of self-growth.

What It Means To Love Yourself

It’s not unusual for people to either completely neglect themselves or mistaken self-love for selfishness and egocentrism. Some even believe that self-love is a shallow concept often propagated in commercial purposes.

However, self-love is so much more than this. While this feeling and attitude toward oneself may have different meanings for various individuals, it’s typically described as self-compassion, self-appreciation, and self-respect.

Of course, loving yourself requires you to first gain a deeper insight into your own mind and feelings, understand your personal behaviors and decisions, and learn how to accept your mistakes. By truly embracing your inner self, you will learn how to be gentle to yourself and your emotions instead of striving for perfection or criticizing yourself for every mistake.

Common characteristics of self-love

In general, self-love is characterized by the following features:

• Mindfulness. When you love yourself, you don’t have to burden yourself with past mistakes or spend time thinking about what you could have done differently. Mindfulness also entails being aware of your emotions and thoughts free from judgment and self-criticism.
• Forgiveness. Self-love also enables you to forgive yourself and others and move forward. You can understand the reasons behind your and others’ actions or mistakes.
• Acceptance. After learning to accept yourself, you will be able to accept others too, including their flaws.
• Self-focus. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, self-love inspires and motivates you to keep working on your growth. You’re also not ashamed to put yourself before others sometimes and dedicate attention to yourself, not solely your partner.
• Intimacy. Loving your mind, body, and inner self enables you to establish healthier, stronger, and more intimate relationships. You feel comfortable opening up to your partner and don’t see vulnerability in your relationship as a weakness.

Why Is It Important To Love And Respect Yourself?

You’ve probably heard numerous variations of the phrase “you first have to love yourself in order to love others” a countless number of times. Even couples and individuals who join relationship building skills workshops first need to address personal issues and behaviors before working on their relationships.

However, you still may be wondering why this is so important. In fact, a certain dose of healthy self-criticism may even benefit your growth and relationship with others. So, why does self-love play such an important role in your life?

Here are several reasons why self-love and self-respect are the foundation of establishing a positive relationship with yourself and others:

• You are not afraid to stand up for yourself.
• You build and strengthen your self-esteem.
• You don’t grow resentment for your partner.
• You never lose yourself in your relationships.
• You have more compassion for yourself and others.
• You don’t spend time comparing yourself to or envying others.
• You are likely to see the world from a more positive perspective.
• You make decisions that can benefit you mentally and physically.

Why Is Self-Love So Difficult?

However, even if you fully understand the importance of self-love and self-respect in your life, sometimes nothing seems more difficult than letting go of perfectionist goals, past mistakes and regrets, self-criticism, and other feelings and attitudes that damage your self-esteem and sabotage your relationships.

There are multiple reasons behind this even if you may not be fully aware of them. They include:

• Past experiences. Your previous experiences have shaped you as a person, so it’s extremely difficult to leave certain traumas behind. The past often leaves individuals believing that they are unworthy of love and exposing themselves to constant self-criticism.
• Perfectionism. Whether in personal relationships or work, perfectionism can hinder your efforts to love yourself. When you fail to meet perfectionist, unrealistic expectations, the first person to blame is typically you. In fact, it has been shown that perfectionism can lead to serious problems such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, IBS, etc.
• Conflicts. Interpersonal conflicts may leave you questioning yourself and what you have done wrong. This is particularly common if you enter a conflict with a person who cannot or doesn’t want to understand your side and often blames you for everything that goes wrong in your relationship.
• Selfishness. Some people believe that they’re being selfish and egotistical if they put themselves before others or expressing their feelings and needs. However, you shouldn’t feel guilty if you love yourself. This will allow you to be a better person toward others, too.

How Do You Love Yourself?

Although it is difficult to change well-established behaviors and attitudes, you can learn how to love yourself. Here are a few practices of self-love that you can introduce to your life:

1. Practice mindfulness. Learning how to be present and aware of your current feelings and thoughts is truly liberating. You can forget about the past and focus on the present. The key to mindfulness is observing your thoughts and emotions without any judgment. Try to understand why you feel the way you do without criticizing yourself for it.
2. Understand and focus on your needs. Ask yourself what it is that you really need rather than want or hope for. Try to consider your life and personal goals and decide what you need to achieve them. This goes for everyday habits and decisions, too.
3. Know when to say “no”. Don’t be afraid to say no to people. Don’t spend yourself trying to please others, but focus on what you can do for yourself. Of course, this doesn’t mean neglecting others’ feelings and needs but simply learning to set certain boundaries in your relationships.
4. Embrace healthy habits. Pay more attention to your nutrition and physical activity. The body and the mind are intertwined and you cannot love one without the other. Additionally, quality sleep, healthy nutrition, and exercise are essential for combatting anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
5. Consider a problem from different perspectives. It’s easy to feel discouraged by certain problems and challenges in your life. However, instead of blaming yourself or believing you’re not strong enough to overcome them, try to see how you can grow using this invaluable life experience.

How Does Loving Yourself Change Your Life?

Working on self-love and personal growth will truly enrich your life, affecting its every aspect, including interpersonal relationships. By embracing yourself and implementing practices that support self-love, you will notice an array of changes in your life:

• Higher self-esteem. When you love yourself for who you are, you are able to maintain a healthy level of self-esteem. You won’t compare yourself to others and will learn to appreciate your own personality, body, and mind. Stronger self-esteem will improve your life in general, as you will see yourself as a strong, capable person who can achieve their life goals and find the happiness they deserve.
• Stronger relationships. After learning to love and accept yourself, loving and understanding others will be much easier. You and your partner will have a stronger, more open and honest relationship that won’t be sabotaged by your personal insecurities.
• Enhanced overall health. The mind and the body are closely connected. So, a more loving, positive attitude toward yourself will reflect on your mental and physical health. You will be more inclined to take care of yourself and your personal needs, minimizing the risk of experiencing health problems and developing unhealthy habits.
• Personal motivation. With more self-love in your life, you will be more motivated and inspired to pursue your life goals. You’ll believe in yourself more and be more resolute to realize your potential.
• More control over your life. By getting in touch with your inner self and learning to accept it, you will feel more in control over your life. You will have the strength to change the things you don’t like, see challenges as an opportunity and face problems instead of withdrawing to yourself.

Individual Coaching for Relationship Issues: Start Your Journey Toward Self-Love

Self-love is at the core of your self-improvement and personal relationships. However, silencing that inner voice that has been telling you that you aren’t good enough or that you don’t deserve love for years is truly challenging. You may be even sabotaging your relationship with your partner without even being aware that the issues stem from your personal dissatisfaction and deeply ingrained survival patterns.

Here at PIVOT, we will help you not only address these issues but also apply high-result solutions to resolve them. Whether you want to work on yourself or improve your relationship building skills, our carefully devised process and workshops will help you identify the underlying negative patterns, take steps to modify them, and learn how to build a more loving, understanding relationship with yourself and others.

With us, you can join intensive workshops for personal growth at the Glass House or achieve progress through individual coaching with a PIVOT Coach. We give you an opportunity to not only identify the problem and its cause but also intensively work on altering well-established behaviors. Get the support & professional guidance you need with us!